Tea at Trianon: The Global Exploitation of Women and Girls

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, June 2, 2016

The Global Exploitation of Women and Girls

From the New Statesman:

It has been about 18 months since women’s rights activists everywhere were left reeling from Julie Bindel’s exposé of Amnesty International’s determination to decriminalise pimps and punters in the global sex trade. The news was received with shock and disgust from those of us active in the fight against commercial sexual exploitation. There was also - especially from those of us who’ve lived the sex trade - a deep sense of betrayal. The bald reality is that when you have been brutalised in a system which is founded on inequality and shaped by the consistent violation of your human rights, you expect the most recognised human rights group on earth to acknowledge the wrongness of that system.

Yet in its recently leaked "Draft Policy on Sex Work", Amnesty displays its blind ignorance to this understanding. The headline of Resolution 2.3 reads: "International Board – Policy calling for the decriminalisation of sex work".

The document itself is a sight to behold. It refuses to recognise that commercial sexual exploitation is a highly gendered abusive practice, and in numerous places throughout the document, Amnesty considers recommending the decriminalisation of punters, pimps, brothel owners and others who exploit women for financial gain or sexual gratification in the global sex trade. (Read more.)